Here’s why Trumpism is the new Reaganism, without the virtues

In 2016, we could always say that the United States did not go completely nuts – because Donald Trump did not win the popular vote for president. Most of the country voted against him again in 2020. But not this time. Trump won the popular vote as well as the electoral college. His second-term victory does not have an asterisk.

As we absorb what has happened, what decade does this feel like? It is beginning to look and feel like the 1930s. With this election, the postwar world is now over. The architecture established after World War II – the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the World Health Organisation, international accords on climate change and the environment, and human rights bodies – are a shadow of their former stature. NATO will be under immense stress from Trump. We have authoritarian dictators invading countries to extend their raw power. Isolationism has gripped the superpower that has been the engine of democracy, the United States, and trade wars will be unleashed.

President-elect Donald Trump celebrates at the Palm Beach Convention Centre in Florida.Credit: Getty Images

Having worked on many Democratic campaigns, I can say the Democrats are left in complete shock and disarray. There are already recriminations, much of the blame laid – rightly – on Joe Biden for not stepping down at least a year earlier. “Donald Trump’s second term is Joe Biden’s real legacy,” reads the headline in The New Yorker.

Biden’s legacy is gone. Until this election, he was seen as one of the most successful presidents on domestic policy since Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. He was seen as the leader of the West on Ukraine and the country most committed to ending the wars in the Middle East and securing a state for Palestine. Today, he joins Jimmy Carter as being a failed, one-term president.

Until election day, Kamala Harris was viewed as running a virtually flawless campaign, funded by more than $US1 billion, studded with three presidents and a galaxy of stars who dominated rallies and media platforms. But Harris sought to make this election a referendum on Trump. She failed. A majority chose economic security and nativist values. She will be flayed for hesitancy in finding her policy settings and avoiding mainstream media scrutiny.

Trump has broken the mould of politics in America. I worked through the epochal Republican ascensions of 1980 when Ronald Reagan came to power, and 2000, when George W. Bush took office. They stood for a fundamental break with what the Democratic Party stood for. There was anger over their policies and priorities. But even in extremis, there was no doubt of their humanity, decency and personal values of honour, service and patriotism.

Trump is not made of that stuff. Everything he expresses contains contempt for those who oppose him or stand in his way. His weapon of choice is to denigrate, eviscerate, trash and obliterate his opponents. With his record in public life over the past nine years, and now on the cusp of a second term, he has redefined the type of person a president can be. He is viewed by most Americans as worthy of the highest office in the land.

The Trump resurrection was a trifecta. First, it’s still the economy, stupid – the potent political zinger James Carville coined in 1992 to propel Bill Clinton into the presidency. As Americans went to vote this time, more than 60 per cent of the country believed the country was on the wrong track. Ronald Reagan made Jimmy Carter a one-term president in 1980 when he asked voters to consider if they were better off four years later. Now, more than half the country readily states they are not better off than they were four years ago. Bread-and-butter goods and services are 10 to 40 per cent more expensive. Who wants to vote for that?

Second was immigration and the inability to control the border in the first three years of Biden’s presidency. Trump marinated this issue with fear of “the other” who were poisoning the blood of the country, who were taking jobs from other Americans of colour, and adding to the crisis in affordable housing. Trump’s intention is to deport at least a million of them shortly after he assumes office. The wall with Mexico will be completed.

Third was protectionism, and the promise to wield tariffs like a sword to rebuild American factories and force foreign companies to build in the US if they want to sell in the US. A trade war to weaken China looms.

Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledges her defeat at Howard University in Washington. Credit: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Reagan was a true pillar of the Republican Party. He reset the country’s compass with a strong and coherent conservative agenda: smaller government, lower taxes, leadership of the West against the evil empires of communism and authoritarianism, all to preserve democracy, freedom and liberty, and thereby promote security, stability and peace. Trumpism doesn’t resemble any of that, but it is now the successor to Reaganism – and could well dominate American politics for a generation.

Should anything prevent Trump from finishing his term, his loyal acolyte J.D. Vance, the incoming vice president, will pick up the mantle and ensure that Trumpism lives. We know little about him and how he will think and act in a crisis engulfing the country and its security.

In his speech claiming victory, Trump said: “I will fight for you and your family for the future.” But he did not reach out to those who did not vote for him. Half the country wants no part of him. Trump’s agenda is not to bring the country together. Make no mistake: Trump wants to vanquish his enemies – those who not simply opposed him but who sought to take him down, legally and politically.

Trump’s defeat four years ago was but a pause in his long march to “make America great again”. Again? For which era is he most nostalgic? Today, few are alive who lived through the 1930s. But as George Santayana and Winston Churchill observed, those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. We should remember how that decade ended.

Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.